Scholarship 2.0 is devoted to describing and documenting the forms, facets, and features of alternative Web-based scholarly publishing philosophies and practices. The variety of old and new metrics available for assessing the impact, significance, and value of Web-based scholarship is of particular interest.

It is the first online ELN, the first ELN to be developed in close collaboration with lab scientists, and the first ELN to be targeted at researchers in non-commercial institutions.eCAT was developed in response to feedback from users of a predecessor product. By late 2006 the basic concept had been clarified: a highly scalable web-based collaboration tool that possessed the basic capabilities of commercial ELNs, i.e. a permissions system, controlled sharing, an audit trail, electronic signature and search, and a front end that looked like the electronic counterpart to a paper notebook.

Results

During the development of the beta version feedback was incorporated from many groups including the FDA's Center for Biologics Evaluation & Research, Uppsala University, Children's Hospital Boston, Alex Swarbrick's lab at the Garvan Institute in Sydney and Martin Spitaler at Imperial College. More than 100 individuals and groups worldwide then participated in the beta testing between September 2008 and June 2009. The generally positive response is reflected in the following quote about how one lab is making use of eCAT: "Everyone uses it as an electronic notebook, so they can compile the diverse collections of data that we generate as biologists, such as images and spreadsheets. We use to it to take minutes of meetings. We also use it to manage our common stocks of antibodies, plasmids and so on. Finally, perhaps the most important feature for us is the ability to link records, reagents and experiments."

Conclusions

By developingeCAT in close collaboration with lab scientists, Axiope has come up with a practical and easy to use product that meets the need of scientists to manage, store and share data online. eCAT is already being perceived as a product that labs can continue to use as their data management and sharing grows in scale and complexity.

1 comment:

It's good to see initiatives like these while commercial ELNs remain so expensive. Commercial ELNs are certainly not making a strong case by remaining as costly as they are, while also posing inherent adoption woes. Paper lab notebooks, even high quality ones, can be purchased by the hundreds before approaching the cost of commercial ELN packages. I like the potential collaborative advantages that electronic systems seem to promise. However, I must say that I feel they are best as a supplement to paper. It would be hard for me to imagine a time where I would completely trade in paper lab notebooks for screen input. Does anyone know of an effort to produce a system like eCat, but with more of an emphasis on supporting the work recorded in a paper book? (A system that facilitates collaborative interpretation of results.)

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About Me

I formerly had primary responsibilities for Collection Development, Instruction, and Reference and Research Services in Chemical and Biological Engineering; Civil, Construction, and Environmental Engineering; Industrial and Manufacturing Systems Engineering; and Mechanical Engineering; Alternative Energy; Environment Sciences with the Library of Iowa State University. I was employed from April 1987 to July 2014.
Prior to joining ISU, I served as the Museum Librarian at the Carnegie Museum of Natural History, Pittsburgh, and as an Assistant Librarian with the Library of the New York Botanical Garden in the Bronx, my hometown.
I received my Master of Science degree in Library Science from the University of Illinois-Urbana-Champaign in 1975, and my undergraduate degree in Anthropology from Lehman College of the City University of New York, The Bronx.